Somewhere Between Genius and Stupid
by laudanine
Summary: At first Wheatley just wanted to apologize to Chell, but you can't apologize to someone who has no memory of the event. So he's decided to do one better, and make it up to her. Oh, what a bad description! Contains human!Wheatley, some snarky GLaDOS, and a very quiet as always Chell.


_Author's Note: Hello lovelies! I know I've been letting some of my other stores putrefy in the back of the fridge for too long, so I'm here to post SOMETHING which will, hopefully, get me writing more and lead to me perking up those other old desiccated stories with shiny new chapters! No, prolific I am not. As you'll gather this is a presumed all-cores-equal-some-poor-sod's-gray-matter story, also working on the assumption that Aperture would never throw away a perfectly good body when it could be kept in some kind of cryo-storage forever. I think those are both, if not head-cannon assumptions, at least not totally implausible. If you don't like my head-cannon for how Aperture works, blame Waffleguppies (or wafflestories); her work is, like, FORMATIVE. Not that I compare to her insane brilliance! All the same, enjoy._

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Wheatley wasn't quite used to his body. Yet. Again. Some kind of modifier belonged there, he was positive. He also wasn't quite sure how to talk about his body, or even think about his body. Words kept creeping into his vocabulary, words he hadn't known he'd known or would again know or... Something like that. His palms, that was definitely the word - palms, were flat against the cloth covering the mattress; one just inches from his eyes and their skewed glasses, from his face half-crushed into the bed. His awareness of this palm, of his view in relationship to it, of eyes and lips and feet (going slowly numb, as they hung well off the bed), was relatively recent. He'd been laying in that exact position, flattening his hand against the sheet and relaxing it slightly, watching his knuckle's bend and straighten minutely, for about an hour. More or less. Far as he could judge.

"Oh good," a melodic voice broke through the tinny air behind him. "Everything is up and running again."

He'd frozen, eyes squeezed shut, thin lips drawn even tighter into a grimace. His hands had frozen on the sheet, spread flat, had gone suddenly damp and shook slightly.

"I don't need a camera to know you're awake. You don't even have to move. I can see your heart-beating, and it's jumpy. Beat. Beat. See, there it goes again. Over and over. It's like a clock; a tiny little clock, counting down the seconds you have left."

He remained silent, twitching in nervousness, trying to keep his breathing even.

"Get up, you moron."

"I am NOT a MORON!" He whirled about on the mattress, spun to face the wall behind him, legs twisting awkwardly where his orange jumpsuit tangled with the sheet. "So I'm awake, there, you happy? I'm so bloody awake, so unbearably conscious, now what? Hm?"

His eyes pined the camera to the wall with a screwed up glare, thinned and blazing through smudged glasses. The camera stared implacably down. The silence stretched a moment too long.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I was distracted from your little outburst by this fun new toy I have here. Toys are fun, and this one is my new favorite. I had an Orange toy, and a Blue toy, but they kept breaking and falling apart. I'm sure this one will fall apart too, eventually. I'm positive."

Wheatley untwisted his long legs with surprising deftness and sat up straighter, "I'm sorry; what the hell are you on about?" Next to the camera a panel slid back fro, the wall, revealing a convenient hallway to a convenient elevator which GLaDOS conveniently called for him.

"I think you should come, and find out."

Wheatley glared at the place the panel had just been, then at the elevator, then at the camera's blinking red light. He narrowed his eyes yet further, something an observer might have considered impossible until they'd seen it done, and made a choice. Yet again, he thought, it was probably just another bad choice in a life of bad choices. With a determined nod he threw his weight forward and stumbled onto his feet and into the wall before him. His head thumped into the camera, sending it's view skittering to the right.

"Listen, Moron, I didn't give you your body back so you could further destroy Aperture equipment. Please try to keep your extremities to yourself for the duration of the testing."

With a sneer he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and slid along the wall and through the door. He continued this wall-slide down the hall to the elevator, growing more confident keeping one foot in front of the other, and by the time he got there he managed the space between the wall and the elevator without much mishap. He thought, all things considered, cracking his head on the elevator's roof and having to crouch the whole ride didn't even count as a mishap.

"I wonder what the capabilities of this old body of yours are, Moron. How long do you believe you were in space for?" The piped-in voice was no less glee-filled or spiteful (at the same time, which amazed him to some degree) within the cramped elevator.

He opened his mouth to speak, then paused. His processor was gone, replaced by his old gooey human brain that had no inner clock, no way to tell time, and no hard log of the things that had happened in space before Miss Knows-Everything-Bossy-Knickers had dragged him back into Aperture. He was beginning to think the reason The Lady had never said a word to him had more to do with talking, generally, being hard. Or rather, when you weren't just spouting angry reactions to psychotic computers, who meant nothing, by the by, and definitely did NOT make your hands do that funny clenching thing, THEN it was hard, the thinking bit. The forming sentences bit. Was this that "freezing up" thing he'd heard of?

"A month," his stretched silence had apparently broken the computer's patience, and she'd practically spat the word. "I was only rid of you for one month."

He shrugged, managing to form the simple sentences and execute them without much difficulty this time, "So I don't remember the amount of time passed, I still remember what happened. It's fuzzy, though. I remember throwing bombs, lots of bombs. Man, those were fun, though, woah! Painful! But what's it matter? And if I used to be," he looked down, plucking at his shirt, "... This guy, why don't I remember that? You remember being Caroline."

"I am not, nor was I ever, Caroline." A camera was slotted into one of the many railings running along the outside of the glass elevator and matched it's speed to glare at him. It focused in on Wheatley, who blinked nervously as it edged closer to the elevator, and the tinny voice continued, "She was used as a component, nothing more. If I am capable of recalling memories from that component, it is due solely to my processing being of a superior quality to yours."

"You're right, you know? Totally right. In fact, I think, you're right and that my processing was inferior, and you know, now, Wow! I mean, I must just be so much. Less. Then you. Inferior, to you that is..."

"You know I almost miss the how quiet the last test subject could be. Almost." Wheatley knew, somehow, that in a distant room a golden optic swung an arc through the air, mimicking an eye-roll to accompany that jibe.

He didn't notice that his nervousness evaporated, but his hands slammed against the glass of the swiftly descending elevator, head bumping into the ceiling as he stood up straighter to look wildly at the camera, "What do you mean, 'miss'? What did you do to her?" A small part of him was shocked by the vehemence of his reaction, but the overwhelming outrage kept him from analyzing it. He'd lost his little war, been sent spinning into space for weeks, then been dragged back down to this hell thanks to that damn homing device (whom he'd argued with the whole way down, to no avail), but it had been worth it. In a small way. He'd had the comfort of knowing that the Lady (Whom he'd rather liked a lot, really. She was nice. And, the more he thought about it, had trusted him. And now that he was human again, to some extent, he thought might have been rather pretty, in retrospect. Not that he thought a lot about her, now. Maybe he could see her again! And apologize, properly.) had probably gotten what she wanted and-. He paused, mid-thought. Is that what she meant? That she'd let the Lady go? Free?

"Of course I let her go, moron," the speakers purred.

Wheatley leaned back from the glass. How much of that had he said aloud? He froze, wondering if he was about to be belittled again, about being a moron, and thinking aloud, when his thoughts were interrupted by the slowing of the elevator and eerily loud hiss of the speakers coming back online.

"... But she came BACK."

"No." He slouched a little to shake his head as the doors to the elevator opened, "No, she hated you, she destroyed you. Twice! She didn't come back, you must never have let her go." He stepped carefully out of the elevator, steady on his feet, although he certainly didn't notice the change.

The elevator opened to a large, poorly lit room. Wheatley was used to this kind of intimidation by her, long halls, big rooms, no lights. Knowing it was her usual behavior did not make it any less terrifying. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he noticed the long dark hall off the edge of the room. He winced at the thought of walking that way, through that gloom.

She'd mentioned the Lady. She'd brought her up. Not by chance, he knew, not by chance; nothing was ever by chance in this place. Wheatley breathed, long deep breaths like he remembered humans were supposed to do when frightened. With his half-hunched form turned defensively away from the unknown he took a last shaky breath ans did one of the bravest things in his short (or exceedingly long, depending on how you looked at it) life,

"GLaDOS, I'm not testing for you. Not alone."

"... You said my name." The pause before the walls purred was long. She seemed to savor the words and lights flickered above along the hallway, lighting up the path to yet another darkened room. "I didn't know you were brave enough. What a lovely surprise. For that, I'm going to do you a little favor; I'm not going to make you test alone. How's that sound?"

Wheatley's laugh bordered on hysteria, and he stood up a bit straighter as he began to inch down the hall, "Actually it sounds a bit too good to be true. In fact, it sounds downright pleasant, which for you means it's probably difficult. Or deadly. Or both!"

Her simulated laughter made him cringe, but he continued down the hall, "Oh, I assure you, it will be both. Come meet your testing partner, I'm sure you'd love to get reacquainted!" The mystery room was suddenly, blindingly, flooded with light before him.

A twisted cage of plastic and steel hung limply from the ceiling, woven through with thick ropes of wires and hydraulic lines like some kind of hi-tech fruit. The two small testing-cooperative robots seemed to be sliding some last steel plating onto the device, but soon scurried to off to the edge of the room to stand nervously next to one another. Above them flickered on one of the large screen (Wheatley vaguely remembered using one to project an image of his immobile core stuck in the control room to whatever testing chamber was active) surrounded by several cameras all tracking Wheatley with their glaring red lights. On the grainy flat screen appeared the almost-cheery yellow optic he so despised.

"Oh, you made it just in time to see her boot up for the first time," Wheatley tried vainly to interrupt, but the rogue AI just plowed through his mewls as though on a script (which, he thought, she most certainly was, having probably rehearsed this lording-over of him for days). "You see, I've tested a lot in my day. I've watched humans test, robots test, humans test while fleeing robots, and I've learned a lot about The Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and lots of other things. All in the name of science. In all my testing, I've only ever been able to refine my methods in relations to the subjects. What I feel I need is a little... Removal from the situation. I need to see where I'm not being efficient, the places where I'm reacting to the subject, instead of trying to improve results. I thought about reviewing the tapes you'd made, but after the first few tapes I was even more convinced of you utter ineptitude in administering any kind of testing procedure."

"I think if I was awful at testing, maybe it's because you just fail to see my genius," Wheatley sniffed and leaned against the wall, keeping both the screen and the strange hanging wire-fruit-thing in sight. The tedium of her monolog had relaxed him a touch: it was, after all, rather the normal state of existence within Aperture.

The yellow optic narrowed on-screen, but continued. "Well, if that's true, we'll know in just a few minutes when you start to test. Now then, meet your testing partner. In the name of the advancement of science, she will be administering tests to you in her own closed environment while I observe you both."

Wheatley stood up straighter, eyes dancing all over the room as lights along the wire-fruit-thing flickered into life. Servos whined, steel plates shifted, and what to Wheatley now seemed to be unmistakably a torso and head rose from the mass, rolling simulated metal shoulders and neck. The comparably small man found his fear again, and shook slightly as a large optic opened, a long thin oval of black glass mounted in the head of the monstrous machine. Jaw dropped, hands involuntarily trying to burrow into the wall at his back, Wheatley stared as a dark hot orange flickered inside the obsidian lens, suddenly shattering into what seemed like a thousand million tiny burning suns which glittered and danced inside his glasses.

The head rose, staring without moving at the small man from just above his eye-level. He didn't speak consciously, but rather breathed the words as though forcing them into existence, "No... You couldn't."

The cameras trained on him for a moment when she hissed, "You have no idea what I can and cannot do, Moron."

"Hello, are we all online?" Every camera around GLaDOS's screen snapped to point at the new device, and the now, by comparison, older AI almost cooed at the young machine. The new orange optic stayed trained on Wheatley, so GLaDOS continued on, "Oh, I see that you're still not much of a talker. Well, unlike the Moron over here, you get a new name upon the christening of this new, superior form. Since you're the Secondary External Testing System, we'll call you SETS. Isn't having a name nice? And SETS, the small quivering pink thing in the room with you is a testing subject. His name is irrelevant. If I've programed you properly, which I have, of course, you should know just what to do. To prevent any effects a third party might have on your testing interactions, I will only be able to observe after this point, so I suppose I ought to say goodbye." The cameras around GLaDOS's screen swung to look at Wheatley, "And happy testing."

A single panel raised, and the two small robots scurried under it just as the screen projecting the image of GLaDOS's chassis powered down. Wheatley stared back at SETS and her orange optic. Seconds passed, Wheatley silently and unconsciously biting his lower lip, trying to form the words. None of his thoughts flow in straight lines like they did when he was a core, being inside his head feels like falling. Falling and spinning and spiraling down to a planet and screaming the whole way down. If he were a core it would just click, words would just slide into place in his mind and speakers would project them out and a tinny little microphone would listen for the response and it was all so much easier then. He though, 'This is what it means to freeze up' and just like that he decided that he is not the kind of man to freeze up, so he let the words just spill without weighing them.

"Ahem. Uhm. Hello. I'm sorry. I am so sorry. You may not know why. Listen, you- do you remember anything before you were SETS? Just now? Do you remember anything with legs, lots of leg, really, and arms, maybe?" Wheatley's voice cracked as he tried very hard not to claw at the walls, both impressed at himself and already regretting making the decision to speak.

The wire cocoon slid forward with a whir to move the orange-lit lens closer to the mans face. After a long pause, the entire front of the optic swung from side to side.

"No? You don't... Remember anything? Nothing at all? Nothing about bombs or potatoes... Or the moon?" He laughed a little, again vaguely hysterical, but was now leaning away from the wall. "So you don't know who I am?"

The orange optic swung a no, once again.

"What about the sky? The surface? An utter lack of panels and buttons?" Wheatley had taken a few steps forward, and was gesturing widely with both arms while the optic shook back and forth; no,no,no. "What about grass? Birds?And apples..? Bagels..?"

The optic shook back and forth a few more times as he finished talking. Wheatley stood well into the room now, just feet from the machine called SETS. He weighed his words once more, hands buried in his hair, teeth bared in a half grimace before his said it,

"What about testing?"

A black silicone iris tightened, making the optic appear to squint. Deep, bass rich rumbling began, and with the sliding of a few panels, a perfectly round door appeared in a far wall. Moments later a platform raised out of the floor beside the tense man. Resting on the very top, held lightly in plastic claws, was one Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.

Wheatley's hands hovered over the portal gun, though he didn't remember taking the few steps over to it. His gaze flickered between the device, and the optic.

"Do you want me to use this?" The optic bobbed up once and down. His hands twitched over the device, seeming to know without his conscious thought that touching this seemingly simple plastic gun would alter his entire fate irreparably. "Oh, well that's swell, at least we know you can say yes. I suppose I'd rather not have found out just now, but what can you do? Er, but you didn't answer my question, did you? Do you remember testing, not just know what it is, that is, but have memories of it, at all, in any form?"

There was a delay while Wheatley's hands shook above the gun (which, catlike, currently existed as both a eternal damnation and his only possible savior in his mind) and his heart tried vainly to pound it's way out of his chest, his temples, his throat. He swallowed deeply, as the optic watched his adam's apple bob with what could have been called a detached interest. Finally the orange glow shook, slowly, left to right in a "No."

"You always were quiet," he almost giggled.

Wheatley looked at the gun again, so close to his hands he was sure he'd touched it, that he had a tactile memory of the cold white plastic covering the internal mechanism. He knew that he was terrified. That he made bad decisions when terrified, when he had the screaming run-for-your-life chills just seeping out from between his steel plates, or now seeming to seep out of his palms of his sweaty human hands. Further, he knew that if he picked up the gun the fear would go on and on, he'd be scared at every door, at every button, and it wouldn't stop, he'd have no control over the when and where and how of his life for the foreseeable future. She'd have him testing. If he slowed between tests, she could drop turrets into a room, or just let him starve in a corner, and there was a whole new fear he'd never faced as a core: starving. That didn't seem like it would be ANY fun, from what hazy memories he had. Memories of watching test subjects starve while his little core body hid in a corner, but also memories of the concept of starving. Of being hungry. Of feeling hungry.

Which had to be from when he'd last been in this body. Which had to mean he could, however vaguely, remember being him. Being this man, not just a core.

"I'm not just a core," the words came out quietly, though precise. The optic didn't move, but he looked up into, leaning in. "I'm not just a core. And neither are you." Orange glowed directly in front of his face bathing his world, the whole world, in it's glow. His smile stretched large and swallowed the fear whole, burying it deep under layer after layer of conscious decision.

"I'm leaving." He picked up the gun, which, now that he thought about it, weighed next to nothing and really did have quite a comfortable grip, "I''m getting out of here, I'm taking you with me, and there is nothing in the world that could possibly be up_ there_ that would make me ever come back _here_."

The orange optic watched the man jog to the door, perhaps a bit confused by his smile but all the same it started motors into motion, forming the testing courses ahead of him. As the doors slid open for Wheatley, he turned, still smiling.

"Want to hear a really great story? I mean, I think, greatest story ever told! And it's about someone I know, no less. I mean she was AMAZING! Saved the world three times on her own, and I think she might save it a fourth time, though hey, I might help on that one. I'll test if you'll listen, how's that?"

The optic bobbed affirmative to the question Wheatley had almost drowned in chatter, then after a pause bobbed 'yes' again for the second question.

"Right," he jogged through the door and into the waiting elevator beyond, grinning in a range somewhere between 'evil genius' and 'just stupid.' He noticed the cameras in that room glowed with a tiny orange light, as opposed to the normal red, and were following him as though paying attention, "It starts out with this very brave hero who'd fallen into a deep sleep, I mean, no ordinary sleep here, she was out cold! And she needed to be saved. But hey, I was there! And as you'll no doubt note in the near future, I am just amazing at saving people!"


End file.
